My wife, Laura, and I have a good marriage. Which is precisely why we needed marriage counselling. You see, I had no idea how good our marriage actually was. I wanted a score out of 100. Who better to rate a marriage than a marriage counsellor? Who better to improve that score than a marriage counsellor? After all, if a marriage counsellor can fix a marriage on the verge of ruinous collapse, imagine what she could do for a sturdy one?

So one afternoon my wife and I found ourselves seated on a puffy couch in a downtown office with a box of tissue on the coffee table in front of us. Across from us sat a perfect stranger with a degree. On cue, we began talking about our problems.

Specifically, we found ourselves talking about an argument that relationship historians refer to as “The Lost Receipts Blowout of 2005.” Here’s the background: I came back from a business trip and left a whole pile of receipts on the kitchen counter—receipts that are worth money. My wife asked me to put them away, but I didn’t. So she threw them out. I couldn’t believe it. Which is why it was the first issue I raised with the marriage counsellor…Me: So Laura asked me, “Can you take these up to your office?” I said, “Sure.” She asked me again. I said sure again. Three or four days later, when work cooled down, I said, “Where are the receipts?” And she said, “I threw them out.” This was Sunday morning and I was making a very nice breakfast.

Marriage Counsellor: So what did you feel when she said she threw them out?
Me: I felt it was a vindictive action against me.
Marriage Counsellor: You assume it was a vindictive action.
Me: It was a vindictive act.
Marriage Counsellor: How do you know?
Me: Because she’s made threats like this in the past.
Marriage Counsellor: So the emotion you felt was hurt?
Me: I felt like she was taking twenty-dollar bills and throwing them down the garburator.
Marriage Counsellor: Did you think about why she might have done it?
Me: She was annoyed. I understood that. But this was extreme punishment.
Marriage Counsellor: What has Laura told you about your slobbiness in the past?
Me: It bothers her. It’s a tendency I have. Maybe it’s a tendency men have.
Marriage Counsellor: You’re using the gender excuse.

This, I quickly realized, is the problem with talking about your marriage with an outsider. You are powerless to shout at them, hurl a vase against the wall or storm out of the room because you’re not actually married to them.

Me: I think it’s the caveman thing. Men tend to focus on the exterior.
Marriage Counsellor: Men have also been used to having women tidy up for them. Did your mother tidy up for you?
Laura: They had a housekeeper.

She’s been waiting for years to throw that one in my face.

Marriage Counsellor: If something got left out, it would get put away for you in your room. So on that Sunday, you didn’t think, “Oh my god, I told her I would take them off the counter and I didn’t do it!” Your thinking didn’t go in that direction.
Me: No, it didn’t.
Laura: I like this woman.
Me: You’re ganging up on me.
Marriage Counsellor: I’m trying to get you to see that side. At the same time, I can understand that it felt as if she threw them out and they were really gone.
Me: They were gone. They were crushed by some garbage truck and were rotting in a landfill.
Marriage Counsellor: So what did you do?
Me: It was a heated moment. I said, “I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you threw out money.”
Marriage Counsellor: Was it about the money, or was it that she was hurting you?
Me: It was that she was hurting us.

This was a nice touch, if I do say. Can’t go wrong using “us.”

Marriage Counsellor: You felt hurt.
Me: I wasn’t saying I was right. I was wrong. But her reaction was also wrong. She stormed out of the kitchen. I ate my waffles and bacon alone. We probably spent three to four hours not talking. Finally, we started talking about it. And when we did, we began laughing.
Marriage Counsellor: Do you still feel upset?
Me: No. I think I’ll probably be more careful with receipts in the future. I think she’ll be more careful about what she throws out.
Marriage Counsellor: Are you finished expressing what you feel, Mark?
Me: I think I’ve expressed it. I always realized I was wrong, but her reaction was excessive and damaging in a negative way.

The prosecution rests, so to speak. But the prosecution didn’t do so good, methinks. That housekeeper business caught me completely by surprise. Still, the “excessive and damaging” line was a good closer.

Marriage Counsellor: Okay, Laura, your turn.
Laura: In our house, Mark has one room where he can keep it the way he likes and that’s his office, and it’s notoriously messy. My only request is that the mess doesn’t spread through the rest of the house. I do pick up after him. I put his socks in the laundry. I pick up his boxer shorts because for me it’s the path of least resistance. But I think with receipts, that’s his business. He doesn’t come to my office and put receipts away for me.
Me: You never asked.

This comment was hilarious, despite the fact that neither of them laughed.

Laura: No, you can’t interrupt. The other thing is that I don’t want to be a wife that nags, because then you become a mother that nags and then all you ever do is nag and that’s how people think of you.
Marriage Counsellor: It’s a dilemma when the mate doesn’t cooperate. You either do it yourself or you nag.
Laura: So finally, after three days, I said—and this is exactly what
I said to him—“The next time you go upstairs, will you please take the receipts?”
Marriage Counsellor: After three days you said it?

Yes. Three whole days. We’ve established that.

Laura: Yes.
Marriage Counsellor: And you said it in a way that showed you really meant it?
Laura: Yes. We made eye contact, so I knew he heard me. Another day goes by and they’re still sitting there in the exact same spot. He’s been up and down the stairs a hundred times. So I put them in the garbage.
Marriage Counsellor: Have you ever done anything like that before?
Laura: He used to leave a wet towel on the bed. So one night I put the wet towel under his pillow and he found it when he went to bed. Since then, he’s never left a wet towel on the bed.
Marriage Counsellor: So you thought maybe this will teach him a lesson?
Laura: Exactly.
Marriage Counsellor: Well, maybe Mark didn’t know you meant it. He knows now. But he didn’t know then.
Laura: What I was surprised by is that he said he felt like I stabbed him in the back.

It’s true. I did accuse her of stabbing me in the back. Why Laura is using my best material against herself I cannot answer. Bad move.

Marriage Counsellor: But you never said to Mark, “If you don’t take them up, I’m going to throw them out.”
Laura: No, I didn’t.
Marriage Counsellor: That’s the little bit that felt like a betrayal. He doesn’t know there’s this storm building inside you. He got no warning. And then suddenly there’s this action that shocks him.

Well put, Marriage Counsellor. Well put, indeed.

Laura: But at the same time, suddenly I feel betrayed because I asked really nicely.

Oh, so now everyone gets to feel betrayed? That’s rich. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to say this at the time. Note to self: If you’re going to call BS on your wife during therapy, do it while the marriage counsellor is still in the room.

Marriage Counsellor: What percent of the housework do you do?
Laura: We’ve come up with a pretty good system. Mark does all the cooking, I do all the laundry. We both try and do garbage and recycling. It’s about fifty-fifty. But I do all the tidying.
Marriage Counsellor: What does it feel like when you pick up Mark’s socks day after day?
Me: Well, it’s better than picking up someone else’s socks.

This was also hilarious.

Marriage Counsellor: What does it feel like?
Laura: I feel like a 1950s housewife. But if I don’t do it, nobody will.
Marriage Counsellor: Have you raised this with him?
Laura: No.
Marriage Counsellor: Why don’t you do that now?
Laura: I don’t want to be your housekeeper.

If this reads a bit melodramatic, that’s because it felt a bit melodramatic.

Me: I think the important thing to say here is, it goes both ways.
Marriage Counsellor: Mark, I’m going to stop you here and tell you where a good place to start is. Laura has talked about what it feels like, which is a lot better than betraying you and keeping it inside and then resorting to an action which is shocking and hurtful. The place to start is by relating to what she’s telling you. Get inside her head and think, What does that feel like?
Me: I don’t know what that would feel like to pick up someone’s underwear. Maybe it feels nurturing—we help each other out. On the other hand, it could be demeaning.
Marriage Counsellor: Okay, so that’s a part of it. What about the other part of what she said, the non-listening part and then feeling like she’s going to have to turn into the nagging wife. Try to relate to how that must feel.
Me: I’m sure it’s very annoying.
Marriage Counsellor: Annoying? That’s it?
Me: It must be hurtful. If she behaved that way to me, I think I would be hurt and feel as though she doesn’t love me.
Marriage Counsellor: Now ask Laura if that’s how it feels.
Me: Is that how it feels?
Laura: Yes.
Me: Honestly?
Laura: It does.
Marriage Counsellor: What I find with couples is if they slow down and do this stage—if they really stop and take in the feelings, which you did beautifully—then you don’t have to go on to the “What are we going to do about it?” stage.

This is the key lesson right here. And it’s a good one. All you really have to do is imagine how much it must suck to be your spouse sometimes, and if your spouse sees that you have done that—that you have truly empathized—their anger level will kick down several notches.

Me: Just so that we paint as balanced of a portrait as possible, sometimes the way Laura deals with recycling is very irresponsible. She’ll put all the recycling in the blue box and I’m left on garbage night prying a frozen egg carton off an apple-juice can.
Marriage Counsellor: And you’ve raised this?
Me: Numerous times.

In hindsight, I have to say this was a brilliant move. Everyone’s feeling fuzzy and happy because I just admitted how horrible it is to be married to me, and then I come out of nowhere with this guerrilla-style attack. It’s shock and awe all over again, people.

Marriage Counsellor: Laura, I want you to think about what it feels like to be Mark on garbage night when he’s prying the garbage apart with cold hands. I want you to…

And you can pretty much get a sense of where it goes from there. The marriage counsellor made Laura think very hard about how it felt when I had to pry a frozen milk carton off a can of apple juice. She felt bad, which made me feel good. After that, our hour was just about up.

Before we left, however, I asked the marriage counsellor to rate our marriage. She’s seen a lot, after all. She declined to give it a score, as I’d hoped, but she did say that it was very solid, that we seemed very loving and supportive, that we were not prime candidates for counselling, etc., etc. Then she told us something that surprised me: Not all of her clients are lying, cheating, substance-abusing narcissists who can’t form or maintain relationships—though, to be sure, a fair number are. The truth, she said, is that many stable and loving couples receive counselling on a regular basis.

Did marriage counselling help us? Laura has gotten a lot better about separating garbage. That said, I still leave out the odd pair of boxer shorts on the floor, which is reprehensible and piggish, and makes Laura feel like a 1950s housewife. True, I’m partially reformed, but not fully, and when I lapse I can now reflect on what it really and truly feels like to be joined in matrimony to a partial slob like me. That, in the end, doesn’t make our marriage perfect, but it does make it better. I give it 99 out of 100.